Meet Me When It Rains
by my-voice-rising
Summary: Lupin remembers a firehaired girl from his past, and the ridiculous umbrella she used to carry. Oneshot.


Meet Me When it Rains  
myvoicerising

She carried an antique, tattered, black umbrella that she always used, because she liked getting wet.

"But not _too _wet," she would explain for the hundredth time with a grin and a giant step into a puddle.

That's why she had the umbrella. She always said it was the perfect medium between wet and dry.

Cleanliness and the dirt of sin.

She was Echo, my nymph, and we would hide under the umbrella in the dark or under the infinite canvas of gray sky.

"Meet me when it rains," she would whisper when James was not there.

And I would.

We would meet at the portrait of the Fat Lady and I would have James' invisibility cloak. She would smile and laugh quietly and thrill herself with the idea of being caught. And we stole into the night, the umbrella folded under her arm, fingers tangled together like ivy.

Like the color of her eyes.

We would run out into the inky black of night onto the school grounds. Up went the umbrella, and she wound around me and danced the ballet like a gust of wind. Her breath in my hair was a gentle breeze and we would reach the forbidden forest.

Her laughter was my music.

She would barely mutter "Here, Remus," before our fingers were at the buttons and dripping red hair and her smile was like a butterfly spreading.

There were no boundaries, no fences, no locks and keys. Anything was possible and anything could have and did happen. We explored each other like two lost travelers, blindly seeking for anything.

"It's cold," we would say between the heavy breaths and hard kisses. But we wouldn't be cold for long, and even if we were it was a beautiful chill.

So were the nights of our seventh year; fiery touch and rain and words that thrilled to the marrow.

Some nights when sleep evaded me, I could hear the slow, sad songs of her violin from the girls' dormitories, and I knew that it meant she and James were fighting.

She loved him.

But she needed me.

I knew that the bittersweet notes meant I would meet her in the rain. I knew that it meant counting down the slow hours and sitting through James's _I-don't-understand-her _would be worth it.

Because when she and I fucked under the rain we understood each other wholly and I saw her wings and she saw mine. She said they were the color of a Robin's.

Hers were always made of pearls and quartz, dripping over us like the silver raindrops.

It was nearly the end of term, and the raindrops were growing warmer, burning against our fiery skin. The rain ceased and spring melted into a burned summer. I saw less of her and her tattered umbrella.

I would pray for the skies to open and was left with my own thoughts of her to fulfill needs.

At last it did rain. The night was dark and I waited for her. The mud covered my bare feet, toes digging deeper into the earth. Becoming one.

I waited.

Waited.

Then I heard the sounds. I didn't have to see more than what I did; a hole in the clouds revealed the moon and I saw a shining black umbrella, opened on the ground.

Heard James shouting her name again.

How different it sounded when she said his name instead of mine.

They were meeting in the rain.

Our rain.

I didn't sleep that night. I dreamed, though. About the way things should have been. I dreamed that she would not marry James Potter.

That I would never be standing at a funeral, watching their graves with Sirius and so many others who loved them.

But I didn't just love her.

I burned for her.

Still burn.

The white lilies fall from Sirius' limp hand and stop on her casket soundlessly, like a dove returning to its branch. Sirius' hand finds my shoulder and I still do not tell him or anyone what I remember.

We listen to the sounds of silence.

The skies are slit by God's knife and a cursed rain begins to fall. Sirius stands with me for a moment longer, cannot take it, and walks through the muddy grass thinking that I do not notice any tears.

I watch their graves as my hand reaches down to the old, tattered umbrella at my side. Watching as raindrops splatter over the wooden coffins, I open the umbrella over me.

So that way, I won't get too wet.


End file.
